Heatwaves: NAFDAC, others raise concern on drug potency

By Ademola Adegbite

The Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, on Thursday, explained that the current climate crisis, characterized by unprecedented heatwaves, has posed a severe challenge to maintaining drug potency throughout the supply chain.

She stated this during the 3rd anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Medical Research and Training, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, with the theme: “Preserving Potency: Navigating Heat Stress In Medicine Distribution And Usage,” held at the institute Conference Room, UCH, in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

The programme was organised in collaboration with the NAFDAC.

Adeyeye, who was represented by NAFDAC’s Director of Laboratory Services (Drug), Inkem Ifudu, said, “The primary mandate of the regulatory body remains to safeguard public health by monitoring the distribution, use, importation, and exportation of medications, making the protection of active pharmaceutical ingredients from environmental degradation a front-burner issue for the agency.”

​Delving into the clinical implications of the crisis, NAFDAC DG explained that heat stress behaves as a quiet destroyer of essential medications, leading to massive, unexpected treatment failures across healthcare settings.

She pointed out that common, everyday antibiotics like amoxicillin capsules, suspension formulas for children, and the combined amoxicillin-clavulanate are highly hypersensitive to thermal fluctuations

Adeyeye noted that these compounds begin to degrade swiftly even within ambient laboratory conditions if specialized climate controls are not rigorously maintained.

NAFDAC DG said, “The threat becomes even more catastrophic for life-saving cold-chain items like oxytocin, a vital hormone routinely administered to pregnant women during delivery.”

She noted that when such temperatures drop outside the manufacturer’s strict parameters due to severe heat, the biological active elements are completely deactivated, leaving doctors to unknowingly administer redundant treatments while putting vulnerable lives at extreme risk.

​Addressing the structural flaws within the domestic medicine market, Adeyeye stressed that storage requirements are binding commitments that must be strictly maintained from the production factory down to the last-mile end-user.

To combat the unauthorized decay of these chemical formulations, she said, “The agency has deployed its seven specialized laboratories nationwide to perform aggressive, routine post-market surveillance on the local supply chain.

“This regulatory dragnet involves pulling drug samples randomly from various commercial tiers to analyze whether they still retain the chemical specifications outlined by their original manufacturers. Where anomalies, parallel importations, cloned variations, or adulterations are exposed, NAFDAC has aggressively pursued litigation, impounded compromised assets from open drug markets, and levied heavy financial sanctions against defaulting distributors and companies found wanting.”

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She, therefore, urged Nigerians to completely shun patronizing roadside drug hawkers and uncertified open-market vendors whose unregulated inventories are routinely baked under the sun, leading to degraded, compromised, or chemically modified medications.

NAFDAC DG further admonished them to purchase all medicinal needs exclusively from certified, temperature-regulated pharmacies and to diligently read internal leaflets to follow proper home preservation guidelines, ensuring that hard-earned money spent on healthcare yields the desired curative results.

Also speaking, the Oyo State Branch Chairman of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, Adebayo Ogundamosi, painted a grim picture of the extreme financial sacrifices required to fight the heat wave.

He said, “Because average local room temperatures frequently surge past the ideal 25 degrees Celsius threshold required for drug stability, pharmacists are forced to function as independent local governments—generating their own electricity, sourcing water, and heavily investing in extensive air conditioning systems and aerated structural adjustments just to keep their inventory safe.

“With the astronomical cost of conventional fuel threatening to cripple these safeguarding measures, the ACPN is aggressively shifting toward solar energy partnerships and securing soft financial loans to acquire specialized, WHO-approved solar fridges, ensuring that the last mile of drug delivery does not become a graveyard for medicine potency.”

In her remarks, Director of IAMRAT, Prof IkeOluwapo Ajayi, emphasized that drug potency is intricately tied to human survival and health.

She warned that when global and local climate shifts, such as severe heat waves, compromise a medication’s strength, it becomes an ineffective substance or potentially a poison.

She said, “This environmental degradation creates a dangerous illusion of healing while allowing illnesses to progress unchecked, a phenomenon she categorizes as treatment failure driven by a drop in the required quality and quantity of the active medicine.”

Ajayi reassured that IAMRAT would continue to serve as a critical research and ethical hub, actively using monthly seminars to disseminate clinical findings like these to practitioners and manufacturers to improve healthcare standards nationwide.

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